But Harry still had to push himself to keep up with Voenis and confront her. “You still don’t trust me.”
She paused. “It’s her I don’t trust. Or your judgment concerning her.”
“B’Elanna’s had a rough time. She lost a lot of people she cared about.” And one she loved.
“And you let her take it out on you. I’ve seen your injury reports.”
“It’s not like that. Klingons are just…enthusiastic about…”
Voenis rolled her eyes at his hesitation. “Refugees. Why can’t you just say ‘sex’ when you mean ‘sex’? Listen. I understand you find comfort and familiarity in her. But you know where she stands on the Casciron issue. Can I trust her to do her duty?”
“Has she ever given you reason not to?”
She had no response. “Very well. But you vouch for her at your own risk, and I wish you could see that. You’re not like her—you have a future here.” She leaned in closer. “I tell you this as a friend,” she whispered, as though such friendship were a dirty secret. “Break with her before she pulls you down with her.”
Ryemaren’s transporter delivered them efficiently to the Casciron ship—as well it should, since it was based on Voyager’s technology. Voenis, wary of trusting anything from refugees, didn’t relax until she materialized safely. Except she didn’t relax much, given the approaching party of large, powerful Casciron. Well, large Casciron. Harry could see they moved slowly and were gaunt from hunger.
“I am Danros, commander of this vessel.” The speaker and those accompanying him crossed their arms over their chests in greeting, the left wrist clasped beneath the right hand. Harry knew the gesture was meant to show that the large, venomous stingers extending from their left wrists were being withheld from use. “I extend welcome to the guests in our territory.”
“How touching,” Voenis said. “Except that you’re in our territory, and that entails certain rules. You know those venom glands will have to be removed.”
Harry felt B’Elanna bristling beside him. The treatment of the Casciron refugees was the one thing that she ever seemed to get passionate about, her old Maquis spirit rallying against what she perceived as the oppression of a vulnerable people. He clasped her hand to restrain her. But Danros saved her the trouble. “And you know that is an act of mutilation that offends the Allfather. Must we become less than we are simply to live in your territory?”
“The law requires you to disarm. To live in our territory, you must obey the same laws that apply to everyone else.”
“Everyone else is not required to undergo mutilation.”
“For what it’s worth,” came a new voice, “the literature says the procedure is quick and relatively painless. But then, that’s what they used to say about circumcision.” Harry still did a double take whenever he heard the Doctor’s sardonic voice coming from the mechanical body of the ship’s auxiliary medical probe. Finding the EMH too useful to limit to one ship, the Vostigye had uploaded him into their integrated medical network, giving him control over all the robotic AMPs. Essentially, he now existed within several hundred bodies simultaneously.
“Look, we can debate all this later,” B’Elanna said. “Right now we’ve got a life-support system to fix, right?”
“We have an inspection to perform,” Voenis corrected. “The life support will last that long, at least.” From her tone, she was skeptical that the ship had malfunctioned at all.
But B’Elanna’s tests of the vessel’s navigation and sensor systems bore out the Casciron’s story. So Voenis allowed her and Harry to begin repairs on life support and the Doctor (or a Doctor) to tend to their malnutrition while she continued the inspection. “Thanks,” Harry told B’Elanna as they worked.
“For what?”
“For not getting into that argument back there. Focusing on the work.”
She bristled. “You think I can’t resist an argument, even when there are lives at stake?”
Harry refrained from pointing out that her reaction didn’t do much to refute that. “I’m just saying it was a good call. For you as well as the Casciron. Maybe it’ll help you gain some respect in Voenis’s eyes.”
“Like I want respect from her.”
“Like it or not, she’s our superior officer now, and it doesn’t do any good to antagonize her.” He leaned in closer. “She’s not as bad as you think. She has her prejudices, sure, but I think she’s willing to outgrow them. She even called me a friend today.”
“Sure. She’d call you a friend. You’re the nice refugee, the one who tries to fit in and doesn’t make waves.”
“I’m trying to set a positive example. To show that refugees can be just as civilized and responsible as anyone else. What’s wrong with that?”
“What’s wrong is that there’s so much going on that we should not be complacent about. When people like you assimilate so smoothly, it makes it easier for them to pretend there aren’t critical problems to be solved.”
He strove for calm reason to temper her anger, although it was refreshing to see her getting animated about something. “I think that if we earn their respect as civilized people, they’ll be more willing to listen to our concerns.”
“We’ve tried that. Chakotay and Neelix have been trying for months. And Casciron are still getting mutilated, stripped of something sacred to them.”
“There are Vostigye trying to change those laws too. But it’s hard for them to get enough votes when the Casciron keep raiding border outposts.”
“Sometimes you have to fight back against an injustice, Harry.”
Harry was losing patience at the old argument. “Don’t give me that noble Maquis speech again. The truth is, you’re just looking for an excuse to keep fighting. It’s been seven months, B’Elanna! Tom wouldn’t want you to keep tearing yourself up—”
“Don’t make this about him!” she roared, startling him. “You let go if you want. Let go of your friends, your crew, the Alpha Quadrant, your principles. But you’ll be letting go of me too.”
“What are you saying?”
“I hoped I could talk some sense into you before it was too late, maybe even get you to go along with me. I hoped at least I could get you to be off duty when this happened. But it’s obvious I don’t have a chance. Keep being a good Vostigye soldier, Harry—maybe it’ll keep them from blaming you for this.”
“For what? Go along where?”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Harry. You were a good friend when I needed one, but honestly…” She sucked in a shuddering breath. “You’re better off without me.”
“B’Elanna!”
She activated her wrist communicator. “Torres to Ryemaren computer. Initiate sequence Maquis Alpha.”
“No!”
Harry’s cry died out as the Casciron ship dissolved around him and Ryemaren’s transporter room took its place. Voenis was at his side, looking around sharply. “What happened? Where’s Torres?”
“She…she…”
“Never mind!” She threw him one last look of betrayal before running for the command deck.
It quickly became evident that Torres’s transporter program had not only returned Harry and Voenis to Ryemaren, but had removed several critical components from the ship’s drive and sensor systems, leaving it unable to pursue or track the Casciron ship as it fled deeper into Vostigye space. Moreover, the entire contents of the ship’s weapons locker had been beamed away as well. The medical probe had also been taken, although the Doctor’s program, operating the probe remotely from the ship, remained in Ryemaren’s computer. The Casciron would only get its surgical equipment, pharmasynth unit, and medical database, but those were of considerable use even without a controlling intelligence.
In place of all she’d taken, B’Elanna left only a recorded statement speaking out for Casciron rights and absolving Harry Kim of any involvement in her defection. The investigation suggested that she had told the Casciron how to fake the damage sufficiently to fool Ryemaren’s
sensors (and their operator, Harry thought ruefully), and had suggested they find a ship using chromodynamic plasma so that she could volunteer herself as an expert, ensuring that she would be the engineer on the scene “confirming” the damage. Except her good friend Harry Kim had ended up volunteering her himself, becoming her unwitting accomplice.
The worst part was, Harry couldn’t even comfort himself with thoughts like I really thought we had something. He knew he’d never been more than a consolation prize to B’Elanna, a patient, forgiving sounding board for her rage and desolation—and maybe a reminder of the love she’d lost, the closest she could get to Tom Paris in this lifetime. Their time together had been physically intense, but never happy. They’d been far closer before they’d become lovers. In a way, it was almost a relief that it was over.
Except that Harry had lost the one other person on this ship who had been a part of Voyager. Well, there was still the Doctor, but not in his familiar form—and existing in multiple bodies had begun turning him a little weird, to be honest. And the friends he’d begun to make on this ship were now looking at him oddly, with either suspicion or pity. Harry was alone in a way he’d never felt before.
4
When the hunger pangs began, Kes tried to dismiss them at first. After all, she’d been very busy lately, going for days without sleep as she drew closer to a cure for the Tarkan wasting syndrome, a project she had to balance with her other priorities.
When Kes found herself snacking on test specimens from the botanical incubator, her denial became more conscious and harder to rationalize. Not the elogium. Not now. Just a little longer, please.
But she knew from experience that the symptoms would get worse quickly, and it would be bad for her research team’s morale if they came upon their team leader in a wild frenzy, drenched in sweat, and devouring anything remotely edible. If the elogium was upon her—and the timing was definitely right this time—her staff had a right to know what was happening.
So she logged out and asked Seroe to take over the epigenome analysis. The work would take much longer by conventional means, without Kes’s ability to perceive the molecular structure directly and feel how it could be nudged back into a healthy configuration. But right now, Kes’s priority was to see the Doctor.
“I’ve been expecting this,” he told her when she arrived in the medical hololab to report her symptoms. “Any fever yet? Any cravings for potting soil?” he asked with a kindly smirk. Here, at least, thanks to the holotechnology adapted from Voyager, this avatar of the Doctor could still manifest in his familiar appearance, with only his wardrobe changed to something more fitting a Vostigye research station. He had an alternate Vostigye appearance which he used most of the time, but for Kes, the Wildmans, and the other Voyager personnel serving on Moskelar Station, he reverted to his original features.
“Not yet,” she told him.
He frowned. “You don’t seem excited about the impending blessed event.”
She shook it off. “I’ll get over it. This is my one chance, after all. And I do want a family.”
“But.”
She smiled at his expression. “But…so many people are depending on me right now. This breakthrough could mean peace with the Tarkan, an end to their piracy.”
“Even if you don’t finish the work yourself, Kes, you’ve still made an inestimable contribution. If you hadn’t risked your life to beam over to that damaged Tarkan ship, we still wouldn’t know the real reason behind their raids.”
“I know that, Doctor. But it’s been hard enough getting the Tarkan to trust us even this far. If it looks like the head researcher just gave up the project to focus on personal concerns, it could jeopardize the cease-fire.”
The Tarkan were a powerful, advanced race that preyed on shipping lanes between Vostigye territory and the Nekrit Expanse. Kes had learned of them from Zahir (Zahir! I’ll have to contact him, have him come right away!) when Voyager had first encountered him and his fellow Mikhal Travelers. He had spoken of how the Tarkan would overpower ships, drop off their crews on the nearest remotely habitable worlds, and claim the vessels as their trophies. He hadn’t known or wondered why a people with such powerful vessels would need to take the ships of others, or why they would leave their crews alive. But then, the Mikhal were wanderers, rugged individualists concerned mainly with their own survival. They would have had no way of discovering that a devastating plague had ravaged the Tarkan worlds for generations; that the crews of Tarkan ships, unable to return home, felt compelled to capture other ships to give themselves room to reproduce and expand their population. Moreover, since the disease could lie dormant for decades, they felt the need to spread out their population into as many separate small groups as possible, to minimize the losses if an outbreak occurred.
Kes had read this in the minds of the Tarkan she’d treated, and had lobbied hard with Neelix’s help to persuade the Vostigye legislature to fund this project. It hadn’t been too difficult, really, since her reputation preceded her. Over the past few months, she had become very much in demand within the Vostigye scientific and medical community, and had attracted considerable interest from their government as well. It had been overwhelming to her at first. Apparently her brief telepathic contact with Species 8472 had unlocked mental abilities she’d only been able to access twice before, once with the help of Tanis at Suspiria’s station, and once when her body was under the control of the warlord Tieran. But this time, her abilities had remained permanently unlocked after the fleeting encounter, and there was more than she’d experienced before. It wasn’t just increased telepathy and a limited telekinesis that she had only tentatively dared to explore. Her ability to learn and retain knowledge had increased even beyond her innate eidetic recall. She could even gain knowledge from the minds of others—not by a conscious reading of their thoughts, but more like the way prenatal Ocampa absorbed basic skills, language, and general knowledge from their mothers while in the mitral sac. She sometimes felt like a fraud because of that, but she couldn’t deny it was useful—and endlessly fascinating, as she gained more and more new skills through osmosis from the brilliant people surrounding her. She often wondered whether more extensive contact with Species 8472 might supercharge her abilities still further—and whether she would even want that to occur. She was still getting used to the abilities she had, and to the new responsibilities the establishment kept placing on her shoulders as a result.
“I think the Tarkan can understand the importance of ensuring the continuation of your family line,” the Doctor was saying. “After all, that’s why they do what they do in the first place.” He smiled. “Don’t worry, Kes. Even you aren’t completely indispensable.”
She blushed. “I know. I didn’t mean to imply that.”
“Of course not.”
“It’s just…sometimes the people around here treat me as though I am.” She grinned. “Sometimes I feel so tempted just to run off with Zahir. Just the two of us, exploring unknown space, with no responsibilities.”
“Well, maybe now’s the time. Except for the ‘no responsibilities’ part,” he added.
Kes’s gray-green eyes widened. “I hadn’t even thought about that. I’ve just been worrying about my responsibilities as a scientist, a healer…. I have to start adjusting to the idea of being a mother.”
“I’m sure you’ll be a fine mother. After all, you’ve done it once before. Or after, as the case may be.”
“But I only have fragmentary memories of that timeline.” Nearly a year before, Kes had undergone a bizarre experience wherein she had jumped backward from the end of her life aboard Voyager in an alternate timeline—or her original timeline, actually, one that had been altered as a consequence of her journey into her own past. Nothing since then had happened the way she remembered it occurring in that future. There, Voyager had never been crippled in a Species 8472 attack, and Tuvok and Tom Paris had survived; indeed, Tom had become her husband and the father of her daughter Linnis. But the s
hip had suffered badly at the hands of a people called the Krenim, and both Captain Janeway and B’Elanna Torres had been killed. Kes sometimes wondered if there had been some way in which her own return from the future had triggered the change that had led to the 8472 attack—and to the death of her mentor and one of her dearest friends. But she could see no connection between the events. Perhaps resetting the timeline had just enabled certain random factors to fall out differently.
“I’m sure it’ll come back to you,” the Doctor said. She smiled wanly. He was comforting in his own way, but still, she wished Tuvok were here to advise her. In many ways, she felt that the crippling of Voyager had been liberating for her, forcing her to move beyond the comfort zone of her ship and friends, to strike out and make it on her own as an adult. But she often wished for Tuvok’s wise, reasoned counsel to guide her. His decades of experience as a father and husband would be very helpful to her in the weeks and months—all right, years—ahead.
Husband! The word resonated in her mind. “I had really better talk to Zahir,” she said.
“I know this is a big decision to spring on you like this.”
“Decision?” On the viewscreen, Zahir looked around in disbelief, even though there was no one else in the cabin of his cozy scout ship to look at. “From what you’re telling me, Kes, it sounds like I’ve got no choice in the matter!”
“I’m the one who has no choice, Zahir. The elogium is once in a lifetime. And we both knew it would happen soon.” She struggled to keep her tone gentle, but the hormonal surges and her soaring body temperature made it difficult, even with the supplements the Doctor had given her to ameliorate the effects.
“But I didn’t think it would be…” Zahir trailed off, his ridged nose wrinkling in a frown as he brushed his long black hair from his face. She self-consciously brushed at a few of her own locks, their golden curls gone limp and dull from the sweat that drenched them. She’d stripped down to nothing, alone in her quarters with only her lover to see her, but she was still burning up and panting, and it embarrassed her to look so bedraggled in front of him, even though he didn’t seem to mind watching her pace the room this way. “There’s nothing the Doctor can do to…to treat this? He’s had years to come up with something.”
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